Mad Reviews: 2001 A Space Odyssey

 

Well, this is it. THE Sci-fi epic, the space movie to end all space movies, what is widely regarded as the greatest science fiction movie ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This movie has been on my watch list for a very long time. Everybody I've talked to that has seen it has told me it’s a masterpiece, and they've had the critics to back it up: It has a 95% approval rating on rotten tomatoes and the AFI named it the greatest Sci-fi movie of all time. I thought to myself "Really?" so they think it’s better than such Sci-fi/Space Epics like the Star Wars trilogy, Terminator 1 & 2, Alien, Aliens, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? Well, since it was being held to such a high esteem, I told myself that I would watch it the first chance I got...

So when I saw this movie on sale for 10$ on Blu Ray the other day, I didn't waste any time to buy and watch the movie that everyone considers to be one of the best movies ever made. And after watching it, I ask this question: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Okay, before anyone forms a lynch mob, I will say that I like this movie. I thought it was visually stunning, ahead of its time, and thrilling, but the greatest Sci-fi movie ever made? Hell no.

In my opinion, it's not the best Sci-fi movie ever made, it's not the greatest space thriller ever made, it's definitely not Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, heck, it's not even the best movie of 1968 (that title belongs to Once Upon a Time in the West). It's a good movie, I'll give it that, but it's horrendously overrated, and allow me to explain why in this review

I’ll start off with what I liked about the movie. I thought the “Dawn of Man” sequence was brilliant. It represents how man, even at his earliest stages, was violent and territorial, and how we are at our most creative when times are at their most desperate. Seriously, using the bone of a dead animal to knock your enemy the fuck out with? That’s awesome. The gang of man-apes also discovers a black monolith prior to inventing the bone club, and they worship it like a god. I figured I’d mention that because the monolith becomes a big focal point in the movie. All in all, I love this whole sequence (which includes that cool match cut) and it’s definitely one of the film’s strong points.

Another strong point is the visuals. The gorgeous shots of space, spaceships and planets are amazingly well crafted, especially for its time. The shot of the sun setting (or rising?) over the monolith is breathtaking, and the shots of Jupiter and the moon are just beautiful. I don’t know how many hours Kubrick spent drawing all of it up, but everything looked great. There is something about the visuals that annoyed me, but I’ll get to that later.

The biggest thing the movie has going for it is HAL 9000. That red-eyed machine completely owns this fucking movie. Created as a perfect robot in control of the ship, HAL is forced to keep a secret from the crew. This secret leads to him “malfunctioning” and killing off everyone but Dr. Bowman. HAL, who happens to be a good lip reader, finds out the waking members of the crew are onto him and are planning on shutting him down, so what does he do? He blasts one of them in the coldness of space and traps Dr. Bowman outside of the ship, leading to one of the most memorable quotes of all time (Sorry, I won’t recite the quote, I’m afraid I can’t do that). Cold, ruthless, quotable, and diabolical, he is one of the greatest movie villains I’ve ever seen…

Eventually, Bowman gets to Hal’s brain and begins to shut him down circuit by circuit. It’s done to the point where you actually feel sorry for that poor robot… Mostly because he’s such a badass character and deserves an entire movie for him to be all badass and shit. I see this as a perfect segue into the problems I have with this movie…

First of all, as awesome as a character HAL is, he’s in the movie for only one act, and is killed off pretty damn quickly. The reason why I have a problem with that is because… well… He’s the only interesting character this movie has!

Seriously, there are no other characters in this movie worth giving a rat’s ass about! This movie has little to no dialogue, or character development for that matter. I understand that Kubrick was trying to tell a story through visuals, and make it more of an experience than a movie… But Jesus Christ! Give your characters some depth for fuck sakes! That way, when Hal kills them off, we as an audience can:

1 – Feel sad that these people died

2 – Feel hatred for Hal

3 – Root for Bowman to kill Hal off, instead of rolling our eyes when Hal is shut down because the movie then relegates back to a slow, colossal bore full of overlong visuals and a bland main character.

I need to speak of another problem I had with this movie: The pacing is unbelievably slow… How slow, you ask? Well, it makes M. Night Shyamalan look like he has ADD. Now, before anyone reading this accuses me of being a Michael Bay fan, I just happen to like slow paced movies. Among my favourite movies of all time include some slow epics like The Godfather (Part I and II), the Dollars Trilogy, Alien, The Shawshank Redemption, etc. The difference between those movies and this one is: While slow paced, something interesting is going on! There’s an interesting conversation, there’s a brilliantly paced standoff, there’s a cop getting shot in a restaurant. In this movie, almost nothing is happening! We have to sit through what feels like an eternity just to watch a shuttle dock with that god damn space station!  I understand that 2001’s slow pace was intended to keep the audience in suspense and allow the audience to enjoy the visuals, but for me, it was just agonizing to sit through, I just wanted something to happen! Anything! That’s why Hal’s presence was so crucial in this movie, because he at least made shit go down! But no, he had to die to make room for more pointless visuals…

That brings me to my next point: Remember when I said there was something about the visuals that bugged me? Well here it is: While these visuals are absolutely beautiful and meticulously well done, most of these shots are left on screen for way too long! To me, the style was getting shoved in our faces instead of actually serving the plot. Okay, I get it, Mr. Kubrick, you put a lot of effort into drawing this shit up, and you did a wonderful job, but… can we get back to the story? Can that monolith blow up more eardrums? Can we see what Hal is up to? Maybe you can give the visuals a break for 15 minutes so we can get some of Dr. Bowman’s character flushed out? No? Okay…

Now I’m getting to my biggest problem with this movie: The ending. Everything wrong with this movie comes together here: No Hal in sight, it’s slow for the sake of slow, and the well done visuals are eating up too much celluloid. After the Dawn of Man sequence, we sit through roughly 2 hours of Hal and nothingness, only to see Dr. Bowman make contact with the monolith, go on an acid trip, wind up in a hotel room with older versions of him, and finally, turn into a fetus floating towards earth… What the fuck?

From what I’ve read, this was meant to be an ambiguous ending that is left open for interpretation… Well, I interpreted it as dumb nonsensical bullshit. It’s only use was for Kubrick to shove more of his visuals in our faces instead giving us something coherent. But who knows, maybe I’m just one of the people that “Didn’t get it.” This part just flew over my head, I guess… If you managed to find meaning to this ending, good for you. It just didn't work for me.

In conclusion, while 2001 has big problems, this movie is nice to look at (to an extent), Hal is awesome, Dawn of Man is the work of genius, and the soundtrack gives you shivers. It’s a good movie, a very good movie… But one of the greatest films ever made? Far from it.

I give this movie a full 3 stars out of 5. I like it, but I don’t love it.

Feel free to use the comments section to tell me what you think of this movie.

- Mad Mike of Metal